Tuesday, March 10, 2009

O magazine is the only magazine I'll read. That's a lie, O is the only magazine I'll admit to reading. I still pick up People magazine while I'm waiting in line at the grocery store and read about the drama in holly wood, it makes me feel better about my own simple, less-complicated life. When I go to the gym I have to intentionally decide that I don't need fitness magazines to tell me what my body "should" look like.

Every month O magazine features "Lisa Kogan Tells All" a piece by a hilarious writer from New York who writes about anything and everything related to her life.

She writes:

"Now comes the part where I admit to a dark secret that I'm hoping you'll keep to yourself: I am part of a small, mortified group of individuals who were born lacking that special spirit-of-adventure gene that makes people want to scale Everest or taste ostrich meat or walk into Starbucks without a little mascara. I still remember the day my husband admitted that he had the opportunity to go to the moon, free of charge, safe as can be, he'd probably just mix up a batch of Tang and stay home. I believe the exact quote was, "I mean, I don't even like going upstairs.

"You know how you're perfectly content with a man and then one day he gives you his last piece of tangerine, or he spends 40 minutes teaching your addled aunt Evie to work her DVD player, or he perfects his imitation of a wombat sneezing and you just fall madly in love with him all over again? Well, the day he told me he had virtually no desire to go to the moon is the day I knew I was a goner.

"I like to think that if Amelia Earhart had survived, she would be willing to hear me out while I attempt to make a case for not setting world records on a regular basis.

Dear Ms. Earhart, I love that you could touch the sky. I think about you sometimes and I wonder how it is that a little girl from Kansas learns to fly. I'm 48 years-old and I still can't walk in heels. Tell me Amelia, did somebody infuse you with so much confidence that you always believed you could do anything you set your mind to? Or did somebody cut you so deep that you always believed you had something to prove to the universe? Were you ever tired? Were you ever lonely? Did you get scared a lot? I like to imagine that from time to time you were all those things, but what I find so really remarkable is that if you ever did feel exhausted or isolated or fragile, you never let it stop you from taking off. Still, I have to ask, didn't the concept of changing into something flannel, ordering in a couple of sushi rolls, and renting a good movie ever tempt you even a little? Because frankly, that's my idea of a perfect evening. It's not that I don't experience a touch of wanderlust periodically, it's just that for all my talk of missing the swashbuckling gene, I'm currently off on an adventure of my own. You see Amelia, I'm trying to raise a 5 year-old with a lovely man. I'm trying to be excellent at my job. And I'm trying not to feel just awful that it's ten after 6 and I'm writing a letter to a woman who vanished in 1937 when I know I should be convincing my daughter to at least give eggplant Parmesan a try before permanently relegating it to the things-we'd-rather-set-our-gums-on-fire-than-ever-eat-again food group. I'm trying to understand Israel and Hamas and the auto industry and immigration relfrom and I'm trying to convince my insurance company to cover the blood test that it decided wasn't necessary. Amelia, didn't you ever have to stay home and wait for somebody to come and steam-clean your rugs? As daring goes, I realize getting a kid to eat eggplant is a far cry from being the first woman to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, but my little adventure is definitely nonstop. And Amelia, like a lot of us, I'm pretty much flying solo, too."